Sleepless September
by Starlightlovesya123
Summary: Dick is gone, and Damian has taken on the Nightwing mantle to preserve the memory of this older brother. But there's another memory haunting Damian, and this one goes far deeper. In fact, it still remains hidden inside his head, only appearing in dreams.


**August 31****st****, 2021. 10:00 PM. **

Sleep had rarely been an issue for Damian. He didn't require much and didn't particularly like it anyway. Sleep meant wasted time, wasted efforts. It meant another weakness, another need he had to satisfy before he could get into more important matters, such as the city at his hands. It meant time away from people, time away from the suit, time where he was lying on a mattress, completely vulnerable, with his mouth hanging open and drool dripping down his chin. Like some sort of mindless ape.

There were only a couple of things Damian actually enjoyed about the REM cycles his body forced him to endure. One, they made him forget things. When he was sleeping, it was easy to stop thinking about concerns of the past, present, or future. Second, they introduced him to dreams.

Now, dreams? He looked forward to dreams.

It wasn't like Damian to "look forward" to much of anything. His typical outlook on life was, _"If there's a problem, fix it now" _or _"If you're uncomfortable, get over it." _They were the mottos of his father, who lived completely in the present, never looked towards the future much, and always looked upon the past with such disdain that he rarely looked upon it at all.

However, there was one thing that Damian allowed himself to anticipate with some degree of eagerness.

September. It was always in September that he would get the dreams.

He didn't know exactly what "_the dreams_" were, if he was being honest with himself. He didn't remember them when he woke up. All he knew was that he had them and that they only happened in September. And they made him…happy, if that was the word for it. They gave him far more rest than any of his other nights sleeping. They made him wake up feeling satisfied, like he'd gotten something accomplished, rather than begrudging and cranky, as per usual.

They were odd and mysterious. And, growing up in the way that he had, Damian liked mystery.

Mystery was exciting. It kept you on your feet. And sometimes, it was a lot better than knowing the truth.

"It's been two years," Damian said, slipping on his gloves and leaning against the supercomputer's oversized keyboard. He was in the BatCave, which had hardly changed over the years. There was still a giant T-Rex in the corner, still the top technology, still a group of bats that would fly through now and again. Damian was looking over at his father, who had hardly changed over the years either.

Bruce Wayne was a static man at best. He knew exactly what it was he wanted, exactly what it was he needed, and exactly what it was he had to do. That didn't leave much room for development. Instead, he simply _looked _changed. His dark hair was showing signs of grey, his brows were furrowed further, and there were more lines and scars etched into his face. But the cowl still fit perfectly on his head, and as long as that was so, Damian's father was going to remain the Bat.

"Two years since what?" Bruce asked, not looking over at his son but instead leaning back in his chair and quietly scrutinizing the computer screen.

Damian shot his father a grim look. But, of course, the Bat wasn't looking at him. He wasn't even trying to remember.

"Two years since Dick died," Damian clarified, without any hesitation, as if he was trying to race the words out of his mouth. The pain attached to them was easier to manage when it came out quick. Like ripping off a BandAid.

His father acknowledged this with an "Mm" and a nod. His eyes narrowed slightly, but that was it.

Damian understood the concept of pent-up feelings. Throw a box around them, nail the box to the ground, conceal it with tarps until it faded to the back of the basement storage room. He'd grown up with this philosophy and had used it well.

But there were some feelings that Damian was too young to pent-up. He was only 20, after all, just barely an adult. Not even drinking age.

And that was why he turned from his father and walked to the other side of the room, pressing a button on the side panel. The wall in front of him slid slowly to the right, revealing the black and red-striped costume that had once been the mantle of Dick Grayson.

"I'm heading out for a patrol, Father. I will be back before dawn." It wasn't a question. Damian had long stopped asking his father for permission to go on patrols. Damian was a young man now, and a very talented one. He could do what he wanted.

Again, the noncommittal "Mm."

Damian hated that "Mm."

* * *

><p><strong>August 31<strong>**st****, 2021. 10:45 PM. **

Out on the streets, Gotham was like a jewel that had been covered with dirt and dust for years, to the point that it could never again reach its previous shine.

_Home, _Damian reminded himself, as he did every night. This place was _home. _The rotting cans of garbage that fell into the streets and rolled along by the cars were all part of his _home._

He clenched his fists as he peered out over the city streets from the rooftop where he stood. The escrima stick in his left hand felt comfortable but foreign, like wearing someone else's pajamas at a slumber party. Of course, Gotham was anything _but _a slumber party.

It was nearly 11:00 and Gotham was relishing in its prime time. Casino slot machines were whirring with life, and already Damian had stopped two bar fights. Stupid, mindless work. He wanted to get his fists into something sturdier, something more than a fat guy who stank of cheap cologne and cigarettes, who couldn't keep his hands to himself.

He needed a real fight. A fight to make this Nightwing gig feel a little more…gratifying to the memory of his brother.

"Wouldn't you know. It's BatKid."

Batwoman. Damian had known she was coming before she even said anything. He could practically hear the disdain dripping from her voice. She hated him, would always hate him. Not that he liked her much either.

"Good evening," he replied, keeping his eyes on the street. But he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Barbara Gordon step forward to stand beside him, her arms crossed over the red batsymbol on her chest.

"I don't understand why you don't get your own costume," she stated.

He exhaled. He was used to this.

Barbara couldn't stand seeing Dick's suit on Damian's body. She couldn't stand the fact that Damian even _fit _into the suit. That was typical. Barbara hated practically all of the BatFamily now, his father included. They hadn't been there to save Dick. Of course, Damian had it in his right mind that Babs probably hated herself too, seeing as _she_ hadn't been there either.

"This costume was available. So I took the opportunity to partake in both a memoriam and a convenience," was his prepared reply, one that he had given many times. He knew how much it bothered her, how much it disgusted her. Honestly, he didn't give a damn.

After a moment of aggravated silence, she changed the subject. "East side of town is rough tonight. Roy is over there already."

Roy Harper. Arsenal. The man was a lunatic, as far as Damian was concerned. He had gone over the deep end ten years ago, in Setember of 2011, claiming that he had lost someone but didn't know who. Someone very close, like a child. His child.

It had scared everyone else to death, but Damian knew the signs of Overworked Hero Disorder when he saw them. Reality slipped through your fingers like butter. It had happened to Father once, back in the days before Damian became Robin.

Harper had gone through Justice League Rehab, as Damian liked to call it, but he hardly doubted the man was completely healed. He had probably just learned to keep his big mouth shut about it.

"Arsenal," Damian corrected Barbara, standing up straight. "We're in the field, Batwoman. We don't use real names," he reminded, as if she was newbie to the hero experience.

"I'll call Roy whatever I want to call him," she replied calmly, but he could hear the bite in her voice. She was near breaking point now. Good. Damian would love a fight, especially one over Dick Grayson. For God's sake, it was as if the woman didn't know that Dick had other people who cared about him. And, as much as he hated to admit it, Damian had been one of those people.

It had been that damn _grin. _The grin that said, "I'm going to tease you and bicker with you and make fun of you and treat you like a kid, but I'm gonna love you and take care of you anyway. Because that's what I'm supposed to do, and more importantly, it's what I want to do."

Dick had wanted to take care of Damian, to be like a father figure, to lead him down a better path. And, being a young and broken child, it had been a very hard offer for Damian to resist.

He didn't grace Barbara with a reply, but instead cast his line and headed out towards the east side of town. He didn't look back to see if she followed. He didn't need her help.

If he needed help (and he wouldn't), he would call the Justice League and see if Superman wasn't too busy being brooding Kal-El to spare a few hands. Good God, that man needed a wife. Or at least a woman. Or _someone _to keep him from falling back into his bathtub and angsting his time away.

Damian knew he wasn't exactly the King of Optimism himself, but he converted his anger into energy. He took his cruel, unloving mother, his distant Father and his "Mm"s, his murderous brother, his lifeless, wimpy _other _brother, and his missing, dead brother and surged it through his veins, connecting it to his clenched fists. Superman just threw himself on the couch and whined about that reporter woman dating another man.

As Nightwing flew over his city, he wondered exactly where Gotham had gone wrong. Not even just Gotham, but everything. Even the Justice League seemed strange, uneven. Something had changed. Something had happened, had messed things up.

Or maybe that was just life, Damian thought grimly. It pulled off BandAids as fast or as slow as it liked.

He jumped over a record store and saw the time displayed on a large digital clock that hung from an advertisement sign. _11:30_, it read. 30 minutes until midnight, and 30 minutes until September 1st.

30 minutes until the dreams became a possibility.

The thought brought a welcome rush of adrenaline to his system. Something would happen this morning, as he slept. Something indescribably good. This was an utterly obscure concept for Damian, this sort of giddy excitement for a _dream_, of all things. And not just any dream. A dream he couldn't, for the life of him, even _remember._

But Damian had been a prisoner of "obscure" all his life. Sometimes, it took him home.

* * *

><p><strong>September 1<strong>**st****, 2021. 4:00 AM.**

It was 4:00 in the morning before he walked into his room, absently rubbing the bruise on his left arm and ignoring the stings of his various other (now bandaged) injuries. Barbara had been right. It _had_ been rough on the east side of Gotham.

In particular, it had been overrun with goons high on fear toxin. Except Scarecrow had modified his formula this time. Instead of making people see fearful things, it made people want to inflict fear upon others. This could be done in a multitude of horrific ways (Damian knew quite a few himself), and thus it had been a rather ugly night. Not to mention each goon had been rigged up with Venom as well, just for good measure. Damian had spent the last hour running scans over files and databases, trying to figure out how the _hell _Scarecrow had gotten his hands on something as slippery as Venom.

But the call for sleep had been hard to resist.

He sat down on his bed, groaning inwardly but making no outward noise. "Weak," he told himself bitterly, chastising himself for giving up the search after only an hour. "Weak and for what? Sleep. Damned _sleep_."

He fell back onto his bed silently, looking up at the ceiling. It was covered in tiny, glow-in-the-dark stars that faintly outlined the image of a cat. It had been a practical joke Dick had set up several years before he died, before he bled to death in a winter wasteland, suffering from hypothermia and the beginnings of starvation. It was a horrible way for him to have died. A weird, unexpected, shocking way for him to have died. And all because they couldn't _find _him, couldn't put the puzzle pieces together. Not quickly enough.

Damian fell asleep staring at that cat, still wearing the Nightwing suit, with its red bird symbol and its lack of the ludicrous blue fingerstripes. He fell asleep thinking of Dick and sank into a dream with _her._

* * *

><p><strong>September 1<strong>**st****, 2021. 6:00 AM. **

She was late.

Why did that make him so jittery? Yes, it had been a year since he'd seen her last, but that didn't excuse the fact that he was pacing around his room. Pacing! It was an absolute insult to his family name, as well as his pride. Waynes didn't pace. They worked through their problems confidently, calmly. Not like some loser nervous wreck who's barely hit puberty and is about to take his first girlfriend on a five-minute date to Wendy's.

Wendy's.

Food. He should have gotten food. _Damn._

He forced himself to sit back on the edge of his bed and wait. After two minutes, he pulled out his switchblade and started flicking it open and shut. After four minutes, he started absently carving the wood post at the end of his bed, not really paying attention to what he was creating as he stared at the window.

Dear God. This was what the witch woman had reduced Mister Damian Stay-Out-of-My-Face Wayne to. A nervous kid with too much time on his hands, who waited at the meeting place to find out whether or not he'd been stood up.

He rolled his eyes at himself. _Weak._

"Put the switchblade away and I'll think about coming inside."

His eyes widened and flew over to the left side of his room, where the other window had been pulled open. Sitting against its frame was a woman.

As usual, there was a split second of confusion. A split second that asked, _Who is this woman and why is she in my room? I've never seen her in my life. _A split second that reminded him this was merely dream. And then he forgot all of that and dove headfirst into the surreal.

"You're late," he told her, standing up and putting the switchblade back in his pocket. The words were meant to be angry, but they came out sounding slightly breathless. Which wasn't far from the truth—he _had _lost a fraction of his breath. Over the course of a year, he would sometimes forget exactly how beautiful she was. How good it was to see her.

"That's me. Maybe I'll be like Barry Allen, you know. Since I'm always late, I'll go get struck by lightning and turn into a super speedster," she replied, winking at him and smiling. She pulled her legs over the windowsill and walked into his room.

"Stephanie," he said, looking her over, his mouth caught in some weird cross between surprised 'o' and a grin. She was still wearing the same strange outfit she always wore in these dreams. The mixed red, green, yellow, purple, and black colors. The cross between Batsymbol and stitched "R" across her chest. But he didn't pay any attention to the outfit, other than the fact that it hugged her form in a way that made him feel somewhat dizzy. Her blonde hair curled down over her shoulders and skimmed her scarred cheeks and that was what he stared at. Those scars, that had been such a part of her short life.

She smiled. "Happy September," she told him, as he gently brushed back her hair and let it rest behind her shoulders. "It's been a long year, huh?"

He nodded indiscreetly, leaning in and kissing the jagged scar that ran up to her ear.

She laughed, throwing her head back so that his lips were disconnected from her skin and he was forced to look at her. "Good God, Damian. I've been here all of a minute and you're already trying to seduce me. At least say something besides, 'You're late' and 'Stephanie'. It's been a year. Talk to me."

He blinked at this, then shook his head. "No," he replied, his hands hovering by her hips. "No, you talk to me. I want to remember all the characteristics of this past you come from, the tangible and the intangible. I want to know the past before it was disregarded, changed. I don't remember. I want to. While I can."

Stephanie Brown's smile faded into something that wasn't quite a frown but more an expression of empathy. "You won't remember when you wake up. You know that."

"And I do not care regardless. Tell me, witch woman, or I will refuse to touch you for the rest of the night," he told her simply, but there was glint of mischief in his eyes.

She snorted. "Keep dreaming, hotshot. You're 20 years old and alone with a very beautiful woman," she said, emphasizing the 'beautiful' with a raise of the eyebrow. "A very beautiful, _older _woman."

"By eight years. That's hardly a difference I call consequential." He folded his arms over his chest. "Now, wench. Speak."

She looked him in the eyes for a moment, then smiled. "Okay, let's start with the basics. My name is Stephanie Brown and you're Damian Way—"

"I'm quite aware of my own name, Stephanie."

She grinned. "Don't cut me off, jerk. Listen. You're Damian Wayne and you were once a Robin. I was too. Except then I died and—whatever, I came back. Even when no one cared to remember me."

Damian's mouth twitched at this but he said nothing.

"So I became Spoiler, because I spoiled the plans of my father, Cluemaster."

Cluemaster didn't have a daughter, Damian knew that for a fact. He almost protested, but then he remembered. Stephanie came from a different world, an older world. A world that had since moved on.

"I became Batgirl and we teamed up together," she continued. "We hated each other but I think that was just a spark of rivalry. We were evenly matched, you know."

He smirked, leaning against his bed, his arms still crossed. "I doubt that."

"Like I care what you doubt or don't doubt." She stuck her tongue out at him and continued, walking over to his bed and plopping down onto the mattress. "We grew up a bit and you started to realize how utterly lovely I was. Unfortunately, you weren't too bad yourself. I think it was that Wayne-dark skin of yours." Her eyes flicked to his bare chest, almost an after-thought, and his smile widened ever-so-slightly.

"Anyway," she said, lying back onto his bed and resting her head against one of his many expensive pillows. "I think there was some romance along the road there, but it was stuck so far and in between all the fighting that I don't really remember." She shot him a devilish look to make sure he was paying attention. He rolled his eyes. Satisfied, she continued. "Everyone thought we were crazy and neither one of us gave a damn."

"Rightly so."

"Shut up and listen. Since when were you so talkative? I thought you wanted to hear this story," she said, rolling onto her stomach and looking up at him dryly.

He merely looked right back at her, feigning innocence.

"We grew up a bit more, years passed," she said, crawling over to him and adjusting herself so that her head rested in his lap. "We kept expecting the relationship to end and it never did. So, hey, the only thing left to do was get married, right?"

"Married," Damian repeated slowly, testing the way the word felt on his lips the way his father might test a new weapon Lucius had delivered. He had heard this part of the story many times, many Septembers, but it still struck him in a rather odd way. Like trying Pepsi when you're used to Coke. Not a bad way. Definitely not a bad way.

"Yes, married," she agreed, smiling at him and watching the way his eyebrows furrowed slightly then evened back out, as if he'd come to a conclusion and could now be at ease. It was one of the few "cute" things that Damian did. She had always tried to enjoy it. "So we got married. Then September of that year came along and…" Her eyes moved down, her face suddenly downcast. "Something changed. I don't know."

"Lots of things changed." Damian nodded. His fingers gently tangled themselves in her hair, brushing against her scalp. "Arsenal became nothing short of a howling asylum inmate. Superman grew into this dark, unreachable figure that depressed even my father."

"And I disappeared," she said quietly.

"Yes. And you disappeared." His eyes moved down to meet hers.

"It's weird, you know? Not existing," she told him with a half-hearted, bleak smile. "It's weird just wandering through your dreams in September and then falling back into God knows where during the rest of the year."

He continued to watch her but didn't reply.

"It's weird knowing that I once was really here, where you are. That I was your wife. Or, at least, I _could _have been your wife. If things hadn't of changed."

"You are my wife. You're here now," he stated, as if this was the most clear and obvious thing in the world.

"Yes. I am."

And perhaps it was.

She sat up and turned around, wrapping her arms snugly around his neck. He welcomed this immediately, already knowing what was coming next. He adapted, standing up so that she could wrap her legs around his waist. He pressed his lips to hers without hesitation, enjoying how she was of a decent enough size that it actually took some effort to lift her. Not much, but some. She was tangible, she was weighted. She was real.

She moved her fingers through his hair, which was still slightly damp with sweat from his patrol. He put one hand on her cheek and the other on her hip, moving forward and pressing her back against the wall, moving his lips along the length of her jaw and back to her mouth.

"Dick lived," she whispered between kisses, her voice strained from lack of breath. "He lived in my old reality. Before things changed."

He closed his eyes and stretched his fingers across the small of her back, pressing his lips together as this settled in. Before things changed. Everything was so much better before "things changed".

But perhaps staying the same would have been more painful. Perhaps. All he knew was that this, this right here, was the first of a long string of September nights and it was all he wanted.

He turned around and let her fall back on the bed, his hands against her hips, her legs hooked around his back. He let himself kiss her in a dream that was more real than it should have been, if it were only a dream. But Damian had long since stopped believing they were dreams. There was a door somewhere, he thought as Stephanie's lips brushed his chest as he pulled her closer. A door that could take him back, to where things were right. He was just on the wrong side of the door.

But, until he could find that door, this side would do just fine.

He sank into a dream with her, smelling the lavender scent of her skin and thinking _God, I'm married _and kissing her over and over again and wondering how in the world he'd fallen in love with her and chastising himself for being weak but honestly not caring. He could chastise himself all he wanted, but, truly, he'd never felt stronger.

* * *

><p><strong>September 1<strong>**st****, 2021. 2:00 PM. **

"We should have found him," Damian said, his arms crossed as he looked at the Nightwing suit in its glass case, set up like another piece of furniture in the BatCave.

His father didn't reply. Damian had known he wouldn't, because Bruce didn't _have _a reply. Bruce knew it was the truth, that there was no argument, no back-up, and so he left it as was, hanging in the air between them like a piñata.

Damian exhaled, shutting the case and turning to the side. There were four other glass cases in the cave. One for Dick's original Robin costume, one for Jason Todd's memorial, one for Tim Drake's old Robin costume, and one for Damian's.

He blinked at this for a moment, feeling a sense not unlike déjà vu. As if the picture was missing something, missing something vitally important. Like it required another case, to show off another costume. Someone else who had moved on when things changed.

Instead, he shook his head and turned away. It had only been a mirage, a momentary illusion of feeling.

He glanced back once more, oddly hesitant. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps this feeling was as delusional as the dreams. Perhaps the dreams were an anomaly, something that shouldn't be happening and that could never be changed. Perhaps.

But perhaps not.

It was September. And, for now, that was all Damian cared about.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note:<em>

_This is mainly a drabble-ish protest against the many problems with the DC Comics reboot. If you don't already know them, this story probably won't make a lot of sense to you, but just know the changes don't look good. Stephanie is being benched, and that's what this story is mainly about. _

_This is another "Star is letting out her feelings through her writing fic." Huzzah!_

_I'm secretly hiding behind this story with a cane, raising it over my head and screeching, "How dare you bench Stephanie, DC! How dare you ruin my newly-developed OTP!"_

_Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Thanks for reading and please tell me what you thought!_


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